Rollin Down the River

The other day my friend and I partook in a little rollerblading half marathon on the banks of the muddy Mississippi River in Saint Paul.

We began our journey somewhere in there...

My friend dusted the cobwebs off her 1994 blades, while I strapped on my two-sizes-too-big pair of 1996 K2's and we were off.  All the other participants quickly passed us.  As it turned out, the wheels on my friend's rollerblades were actually rocks.  To the naked eye, they looked like wheels.  How were we to know?!  The roller-rocks made horrific scraping sounds every time they touched pavement.  Soon, we were surrounded by other misfits who, for various limitations, were moving at the speed of walking.

At mile 6, I knew something had to be done.  I mustered up all my leg power, put my pride aside and switched blades with my friend.  In an instant, I knew what hell felt like.  The roller-rocks were the anti-Christ, pulling me backward when I should have been coasting downhill in a forward motion.  My face turned a shade of red never before seen on a human.  I got dizzy.  I contemplated if I could run faster.  As runners passed us, I knew I could run faster.  But I hate running.  So I had to decide which was the lesser of two evils.  At mile 9 I began to hallucinate and at that moment I had an epiphany: we would wear one of each blade.  

Suddenly, the sun was shining.  We were actually laughing.  The color in our faces returned to a forgetful shade of cardio-red.  As we coasted through a swarm of runners, the finish line in sight, we wondered why it took 9 miles to find a solution to the roller-rock crisis of 2012.  We experienced dark times out on the course, but let's focus on the happy times:

We're surprised we made it too.  

And to end, here's a totally random picture of the railroad lift bridge in Saint Paul: